


Glow in the Dark

by FreeTheSoul



Category: Kagerou Project
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Pillow & Blanket Forts, Pre-Canon, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 18:48:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17431535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreeTheSoul/pseuds/FreeTheSoul
Summary: Ayano blinks. “Camping?”“We can do it inside,” Tsubomi chimes in.“A pillow fort!” Shuuya finally exclaims.





	Glow in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> A gift to @daniople on Twitter for the Kagepro Secret Santa. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> It was fun being able to write the kids being a bit more light-hearted than you usually see them in the canon materials.

“Dad’s not home tonight!”

Shuuya’s excited yell, while he hangs off the banister of the staircase in the front entrance of their house, is what greets Ayano when she gets home from cram school. Unperturbed, she first focuses on closing the door behind her and nudging off her shoes. When she turns back, Tsubomi has also appeared with Kousuke close behind her.

“And it’s Friday,” Tsubomi nods sagely.

“S-So we can stay up late…?” Kousuke adds, rather unsure of himself.

Ayano hides her smile behind her scarf, concluding that they’ve probably rehearsed this before she came home. She drops her bag on the floor and nudges it into the corner beside their shoes, where there’s already a messy pile of abandoned coats and schoolbags.

“Dad already told me,” she says as she strides across the entrance to Shuuya, who lets out a knowing squeak and scrambles off the banister before she can grab him. “He  _ also  _ said that I have to watch all of you so  _ you,” _ and here she makes sure to look directly at Shuuya, “don’t repeat what happened last time.”

Each of the three let out a whine, and Kousuke whispers something to Tsubomi before she shushes him and pouts at Ayano. “We won’t make a mess this time. Shuuya promised.  _ Right?” _

He’s busy whining about not being able to have fun, but snaps to attention when he hears Tsubomi say his name so sharply. Immediately he turns to Ayano and does an over-the-top bow.

“Yep! I won’t break anything, promise! Double-dog-pinky-promise!”

Ayano raises an eyebrow, putting her hand on her chin as if she’s deeply considering what he said. “A  _ double-dog-pinky-promise, _ huh? That’s pretty serious.”

Shuuya straightens his back and gives her an enthusiastic nod, eyes shining.

“Well,” she closes her eyes, then peeks one open at him. “What’ll you do if you break it, then?

The smile on his face immediately dies. “I’ll, um…” he flounders, and Ayano is barely able to keep her smile from showing. They’d rehearsed the rest of the act, it seems, but years of dealing with this has prepared her to throw off almost all of their routines.

“I’ll eat toothpaste for dinner! For a week!” He finally shouts, rather triumphant about how quickly he came up with the idea.

“Stupid!” Tsubomi pushes past to start giving him a noogie, securing him in an armhold so he can’t break free from it despite his desperate flailing. “You’re supposed to say you won’t break it! Ever! Not that you’ll  _ eat toothpaste!” _

“Hey! No fighting, you two,” Ayano chastises, and they break it up quickly. Shuuya tries to get a pinch in as retaliation, but Tsubomi slaps his hand away. Again, Ayano mimics deep thought about the matter. “Well, I  _ guess  _ it seems like you’ll all pretty serious about it…”

“Super se--” Shuuya finds himself cut off by Tsubomi hastily putting her hand over his mouth, and when he tries to lick it she pulls it back with a look of disgust.

As if there had been no interruption, Ayano continues. “In  _ that _ case, what did you have in mind? I’m assuming you already know what you wanna do, right?”

She turns to look at Kousuke for an answer, who’s been rather quiet through the whole ordeal and has shrunk into the corner of a doorway. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see the other two gesturing rather aggressively for what they want him to say, and she pretends she hasn’t noticed it.

“We… um…” He looks desperately at the pair gesturing at him, then back at Ayano. “Camping...”

Ayano blinks. “Camping? It’s winter right now, so we can’t set up in the backyard…”

“We can do it inside,” Tsubomi chimes in.

“A pillow fort!” Shuuya finally exclaims.

A slow grin spreads across Ayano’s face. “That sounds fun! It’ll be like a secret base, just for us!”

The trio seem astonished that she’s so quick to agree, but shush each other before she feels like changing her mind. Ayano taps a finger against her lip as she paces the entryway and thinks. “If we’re making a pillow fort… we need blankets, and cushions, and snacks, don’t we?”

Tsubomi pipes up. “What kind of snacks?”

“I know!” Everyone turns to Kousuke following his exclamation, and he continues shyly. “We, um… When Big Sister’s friend came over, we had pudding together, and we still have some of it.”

“The--” Shuuya starts, and has his excitement promptly cut off by a light flick to his forehead.

“Yes,” Ayano sighs, endeared despite her exasperation, watching Shuuya rub his head and pout. “The one you locked in the closet. You’d better be nicer to him the next time you see him, mister!”

Shuuya chews on his cheek while she lectures him, picking at the skin of his nail in an attempt at seeming uninterested. “I already said sorry…” he mumbles, but there’s no bite to it.

An unimpressed, pointed look from Ayano makes him bow his head with a rather sour-sounding “Fine,” and then Tsubomi kicks his shin with a comment about his manners and the two of them are off chasing each other around the house while Shuuya shrieks bloody murder. Ayano watches them go, a comment about being not breaking things dying on her lips when she realizes that they’re too far gone in the recesses of the house to hear her.

She turns back to Kousuke, whose wide eyes follow her movements rather like an owl’s. He flinches when she raises her arm, likely expecting another head-flick, but instead her hand lands safely on the top of his head to ruffle his hair. 

“Why don’t we go collect all the snacks, huh? We can decide what’s for dinner, too.” She winks, and his eyes go almost impossibly wider with wonderment. “When the other two get back, we can figure out how to build our campsite.”

They head to the kitchen together and start digging through the cabinets. Shuuya is back faster than Ayano expected, but there’s no Tsubomi in sight and she wonders if he somehow managed to lose her on the way back around the house. After receiving an immediate smack to the wrist for trying to steal one of the cookie packets from the counter, he starts running circles through the kitchen and surrounding rooms. Ayano tries not to consider how he’s already this excited while still sugar-free.

He chants: “Marshmallows! Popcorn!”

“Oh!” Immediately, Kousuke looks up to Ayano and tugs her sleeve for added measure. “L-Like if we had a campfire…”

She sighs, grabbing Shuuya’s collar on his next lap around. “Yes, well, we’re not setting the drapes on fire again, but that  _ is  _ a good idea. We can make it in the microwave and then eat it in the tent so we can pretend we have a campfire, alright?”

The two of them seem delighted by the idea, and their cheering seems to summon Tsubomi. She slinks into the room with a sulky look on her face, which Ayano supposes is probably because she lost against Shuuya, and then leans down on the counter with her arms stretched out and cheek pressed against it.

“What can  _ I _ do?” She whines.

“We still need to find cushions and blankets,” Shuuya says, receiving a nod or sound of agreement from everyone else in the room.

“We can split the work,” Kousuke supplies. “It’ll go faster.”

“Good idea,” Ayano nods, closing the cabinet she’d been looking through. “Here. Shuuya and Kousuke, how about you two find the pillows and everything? Tsubomi--”

“I want to make the food,” Tsubomi interrupts quietly from her place against the counter.

Ayano’s smile is kind. “That’s perfect, then. And I’ll go get some stuff organized, then we can meet up back in the kitchen when everyone’s done, okay?”

After setting everyone off on their respective tasks, Ayano takes the moment to herself so that she can catch a breath. Heading back to the entranceway, she collects and organizes the shoes and coats that had been flung off in every direction when the trio came home from school. Shuffling through their bags and her own, she unpacks leftover bentos and homework assignments and makes a round trip through the kitchen and their bedroom to drop off the assortment of things stacked in her arms. 

Heading into her own bedroom, she dumps her supplementary homework and embarrassingly-graded tests into a pile on her desk. She’s quick as she changes her clothes to something more comfortable, kicking her school outfit into the corner to deal with later when the house is slightly less hectic.

Returning to the kitchen, it’s still devoid of life other than Tsubomi as she quietly washes the bento boxes and prepares their snacks. Ayano can’t imagine it’s  _ actually  _ taking the other two this long to find blankets and pillows, but takes the silence in the house as a good thing. Ducking back out of the kitchen, she makes her way to the door to the basement.

It’s a mess downstairs, which is why everyone avoids going there unless it’s a worst-case scenario. Still, there’s something Ayano has in mind that she won’t rest until she finds.

She starts off digging through a few boxes of things that were packed away years ago. Most of it is junk, with the occasional momento thrown in at random. A journal that Ayano doesn’t want to look at; an old family picture that she glosses over just as quickly. 

She tries another box, hidden deeper in the back and filled with even older clutter. It takes her a moment to sift through the old, dusty wrapping paper, but eventually she spots the box she was looking for and triumphantly digs it out from beneath everything else.

It’s something she remembered getting, years ago, for her birthday as a child: Cheap glow-in-the-dark stick-on stars that she’d never had the opportunity to use before it ended up forgotten in storage.

She supposes, as she heads back to the stairs with it held close against her chest, that it’s not important enough to warrant remembering, let alone digging through junk to find.

But still.

She remembers with odd clarity the excitement on her mom’s face when she’d unwrapped the gift, and the picture, now lost to time, they’d taken together for her birthday that year.

Someone bumps into her as she opens the door to the main floor again, startling her out of her memories and causing her to nearly drop the box. Gripping it tighter against herself, she casts an alarmed look down at whoever ran into her. 

It’s Kousuke, who seems equally startled and had let out a small squeak at the impact. Before he can stutter out an apology, Ayano takes a look at the assortment of blankets that he’s dragging behind him and puts on her best smile.

“Guess you guys finally found the blankets, did you?”

“Oh,” Kousuke looks down at his arms as if he hadn’t realized what he was carrying. “Um. Yep! T-Tsubomi told me to look for you…”

“Good job finding me, then!” Ayano tries again to make her smile seem convincing, closing the door to the basement behind her. With a free hand, she gestures at the blankets again. “Are you bringing those to the living room? I’ll come with you.”

She leads the way to the living room, where Tsubomi and Shuuya have already gathered. On the side-table, there’s a mostly-untouched pile of snacks brought in from the kitchen, as well as a cup of what appears to be hot chocolate for each of them. On the couch, Shuuya is lying upside-down off the back but quickly scrambles onto his stomach when he sees Ayano enter.

“You found her!” He blurts out, while Kousuke brushes past Ayano to dump the blankets in a pile in the center of the room. She places the box down out of the way, and then turns to take a look at what they’ve accomplished in her absence.

The coffee table, usually the centerpiece, has been shoved off the side and the couch and chairs have been rearranged into some sort of semi-circle around the middle of the room. In the very center, where the table would usually be, is a rather unceremonious pile of cushions and the newly-added blankets that Kousuke had just carried in.

Ayano tries not to sigh at the mess, walking towards the items on the floor. She’s no stranger to pillow forts, and with so much to work with she figures it won’t be too hard as long as the fort doesn’t get knocked down too many times mid-construction.

Building it goes relatively well, or at least better than Ayano had expected. The finishing touch is the glow-in-the-dark stars on the blanket roof of their building, which garners a range of excited gasps from everyone as they watch her flick off the light to demonstrate them.

For the next few hours, the four of them spend their time packed snugly in the fort and only leaving to replenish their supply of snacks and drinks. There is only one instance of the structure partially collapsing, prompted by a wild kick from Tsubomi, which Ayano manages to fix before it can deteriorate.

It’s late, by the time everyone’s fallen asleep. Kousuke was the first one to go, which is by all means what everyone expected, and Ayano couldn’t help but figure it was a testament to his tenacity that he was able to sleep through the next two hours of Shuuya wearing himself out. At one point, prompted by Tsubomi plugging his nose, he nearly wakes up and punches blindly at the air to try and deter his assailant. In the end he simply rolls over and falls back asleep, effectively engulfing Tsubomi and crushing the novel she’d been trying to read - something torn and yellowing and far bigger than herself that’d been dug out of the depths of their library. Seemingly, after this, she gave up and decided to go to sleep herself.

Ayano isn’t quite sure at what point Shuuya actually passes out, but when he does she carefully pulls the game system out of his heavy fingers and tucks him under one of the blankets they’d plundered from one of the various beds and couches in the house. Careful not to disturb any of her siblings, she crawls out from their makeshift fort and collects the various cups and plates and food wrappers to bring them to the kitchen.

While she rinses the dishware, Ayano casts a quick glance at one of the clocks in the kitchen - it’s earlier than she’d typically go to sleep, but figures there’s no harm in getting a bit more rest. She’s sure they won’t make it through the whole night without the fort collapsing on all of them, anyways.

The house is quiet on her way back to the living room, but filled with a warm ambience. She double-checks that the front door is locked as she passes, giving a satisfied nod that she hadn’t forgotten to lock it like usual. 

Back in the living room, she turns the lights from dim to fully off and waits a moment for her eyes to adjust to the change. Crawling back into their fort, she’s careful as she lowers herself into the mass of blankets. She freezes when Tsubomi rolls over, but relaxes when it turns out she’s still unconscious.

Settling into the pillows, Ayano opens her eyes after a few moments to stare at the star stickers she’d put on the roof of their fort earlier. It’s a bit impressive that the glue on them still works after so many years, and she hopes they don’t wear off and fall on her face in the middle of the night.

The faint luminescent glow is mesmerizing, and Ayano isn’t certain how long she’s spent staring at them before her eyelids feel heavy, and as she closes them she snuggles into the comfort of her siblings and wishes that the four of them could stay like this forever.

She isn’t wishing on a shooting star, or even a real star at all, but she still hopes that something out there will make it come true.

**Author's Note:**

> I find it rude when strangers comment criticism (constructive or not) unprompted, so please don't!
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
